


Change Your Heart

by Kyra



Category: The Office (US)
Genre: Closeted, Closeted Character, Down Low, F/M, First Time, M/M, Male Friendship, Male Slash, Self-Discovery, Sexual Experimentation, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-13
Updated: 2012-01-13
Packaged: 2017-10-29 11:44:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/319553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kyra/pseuds/Kyra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim/Roy. All he's been trying to do all year is be someone different.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Change Your Heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [honey_wheeler](https://archiveofourown.org/users/honey_wheeler/gifts).



> Written for the yankeeficswap challenge. Title courtesy of Beck, "Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometimes". Citations for section-heading quotes at the end.
> 
> Starts in season 3 after "The Merger" -- after Jim's just transferred back to Scranton.

**[--but try to stay out of it]**

"Hey, Halpert!" someone says over the noise of the bar, and Jim turns around to see Roy. Shit. He's holding three pints of beer, and Jim wasn't ready for this quite yet.

"Oh, hey," he says, trying to keep his face still even as his pulse picks up. He's having déjà vu for last year, the year before, every other time he's thought Roy was going to punch his face in. Just like he hasn't been away at all.

"I heard you were coming back," says Roy. "Welcome home, man."

"Oh, wow, thanks," Jim says. He's acting like he doesn't know. Can he not know? Karen leans forward curiously and Jim blinks.

"Oh, um," he says, "this is Karen. She transferred in from Stamford."

Roy maneuvers so he can set the glasses on the table and wipes his hand on his jeans before holding it out to Karen.

"Hey," he says. "Roy Anderson. I work down in the warehouse."

"Nice to meet you," Karen says, shaking his hand. It gives Jim a weird jolt, seeing them together. Old world and new.

Roy nods a little, and Karen smiles pleasantly, and Jim clears his throat.

"Well, uh," says Roy. "The guys are waiting for these." He scoops up the beer. "But I'll see you around."

"Yeah, definitely," says Jim. Roy nods to Karen and disappears sideways through the crowd. Pam didn't tell him, Jim thinks, what he-what happened. But if she didn't tell him, not even when they called the wedding off, does that mean he isn't why? Or does it mean he is why? These are the kind of thoughts that will drive him crazy, and also exactly the kind of thoughts he officially Doesn't Have anymore. He makes a face at himself and takes a drink.

"He seems nice," Karen says, toying with her straw. "Did you guys hang out?"

Now that he knows where to look, Jim can see Darryl and Lonny in the corner by the dartboard. Roy leans back against the wall and takes a long swig of his own beer. Jim thinks: she didn't tell him, she didn't tell him, she didn't tell him, and then makes himself stop.

"No," says Jim. "Not really."

**

**[ABC: Always be closing]**

To be perfectly honest, he never thought much about Roy. He knew he was wrong for her, and he knew he was what was in the way, and that's pretty much where he... stopped. At angry or jealous or both.

The Tuesday after Jim comes back, he's coming out of Michael's office just as Roy walks by, into the kitchen. He feels his old annoyance twist before he remembers - when he looks over, Pam is looking very intently at her computer screen, and Roy comes out of the kitchen holding a can of soda just as she picks up the phone to make a call. Interesting.

If he were the kind of person who'd keep track of that kind of thing, he'd know that in the next two weeks, this happens twice for every one time Roy gets to say anything to Pam - little things, asking if she wants anything from Subway ("No, thanks."), what that kind of detergent they used to use was ("Tide"), or to tell her mom happy birthday ("Oh, thanks, I will.")

It's painful to watch. Once Ryan catches Jim's eye as Roy's leaving and makes a face that agrees.

**

Work is... weird. Er. There's Pam, behind him, all the time, and Karen when he looks up, and Dwight, who he's trying not to mess with, and Andy, who he's... sort of trying not to mess with, and Ryan, whose work game face is totally the kind of thing he'd like to try to crack if he weren't trying to not be that guy anymore. And trying to be some kind of weird blend of the guy he was in Stamford and the guy he was here is harder than it looks.

Plus the fact that he actually has real work to do, for once. He goes down to the warehouse sometimes, which gets him out of the office and lets him check up on the orders going out to their bigger clients, toss in a little something extra if he can justify it in the budget. Thank you, Josh, for at least one sound business concept.

The guys look at him strangely at first, since he's pretty sure the last time Michael came down here to talk about actual work was... never, but Darryl's cool, and knows what he's doing, so they get along.

He's in the back of the truck reviewing an order going down to the Lackawanna county seat, when Roy comes up.

"Everything look okay?" he says, and Jim jumps.

"Oh, yeah, totally," he says. "Listen, I know you guys just drop off to them at the loading bay, but could you make sure this box goes upstairs directly to Cindy? She does the ordering for the office and-"

Roy laughs and shakes his head.

"Dude, just come along."

In the cab of the truck if Jim's showing how weird he feels, Roy doesn't seem to notice. Instead he turns on the radio as they pull out of the business park and throws the clipboard and map at Jim and announces that he's navigating. They're four blocks away when Roy starts grinning and jerks his thumb at an empty lot.

"Did you ever hear about the time Darryl's truck broke down here?" he asks.

Jim has not, and it's actually a pretty funny story. Roy tells it all the way there, and when they make the delivery Jim gets to shake some hands and drop off some business cards with people who all seem to know and like Roy. On the way back he tells the story about the time in college he and Mark got so drunk they fell asleep on the lawn and before he knows it two hours have gone by during which he forgot to hate his life.

Plus it really pisses Dwight off when he saunters back into the office at four o'clock.

 

**

  
**[So you just gotta suck it up. You just gotta move on. Try to have some fun. Come to my poker game tonight.]  
**

This is what he does: goes to work, keeps his head down, tries not to think, thinks.

Time goes by and goes by and sometimes he forgets altogether that he's not supposed to be here. He gets vertigo when he looks up and everything in the office is at a slightly different angle.

He goes down to the warehouse more and more, whenever the documentary cameras are busy and he can slip out without them following. He tags along a couple of times on deliveries with Lonny or Madge, but usually it's Roy who's heading out when he shows up.

"You must have done a million of these by now," Jim says idly one morning, watching the bare trees on the side of the highway flick by.

"Nah," says Roy. "Darryl only started giving me this many deliveries a few months ago." He shrugs. "I kinda like it, though."

**

Things with Karen have been going so slow they're almost glacial. He knows it's bugging her, and he knows he should shape up and ... commit. Stay the night, at least. But when he thinks about it his chest feels tight and raw, like it did all last summer, when he didn't know anyone in Stamford, and he missed everything about Scranton, and his one fan moved hot air around his apartment all night. Soon, he thinks, he'll be able to actually move on soon.

"Hey!" says Darryl one night as Jim's heading back up to the office. "Halpert. You play cards?"

"What?" says Jim. "Oh, yeah, of course."

"Poker game," Darryl points. "My place, tonight, 9. You in?"

"Oh!" says Jim. "Uh, sure, totally."

"Cool," says Darryl. "Get Anderson to give you directions."

"Hey," says Karen later as he's pulling on his coat. "You wanna do something tonight?" Last weekend they'd seen a movie and then said that maybe they'd do it again.

"Oh," he says, and makes a face. "I can't, sorry."

"... oh," she says. "Okay, cool. No problem."

"Fresh blood!" says Darryl when Jim shows up to a table full of guys he doesn't know, and Roy claps him on the shoulder as he pulls up a chair. Jim wins four hands and loses six and doesn't head home until after midnight. It feels good.

 

**

**[You should at least talk to Roy. I mean, he knows exactly how you're feeling]**

This is the third night out of the last five they've ended up at Poor Richard's after work. Jim's head is heavy and he's feeling relaxed and warm, twirling his beer and half-following the game on the tv.

"Dude, I am getting too old for this," Madge says as she throws cash down on the table. She's the last one to take off, except for Jim and Roy. Jim nudges Roy with his shoulder.

"'sup?" he says, and Roy glances up blearily from his drink, then looks back down.

"What do you think I-" he says abruptly, then stops.

"What?" says Jim.

"Nothing," Roy says. "Nevermind."

In the bar light his face behind the beard looks thin and tired and old. Jim hasn't decided yet whether to press the issue, when Roy looks up sharply at the tv screen.

"'s almost Valentine's Day," he says, without looking at Jim. "And I don't know if I should... it's one of those things I think I fucked up on," he says, and Jim isn't breathing. This is something they don't talk about, ever. "You ever not get a chick something for Valentine's Day?" Roy goes on, and Jim takes a long gulp of beer before answering. Two years ago this time he was printing out a photo of Dwight's head from the company newsletter to paste on a Valentine's card. Last year he wasn't.

"Yep," he says.

Roy's back to staring mournfully at his glass like the answer to world peace is in there. He's talking more to himself than anything, like he's forgotten Jim's there. Jim's heard him get like this around Darryl once or twice, but he always managed to take off for the bathroom at just the right time. Now he's trapped.

"She was just always so... and when she was happy-you know?" Roy asks his drink.

Jim seriously, seriously cannot have this conversation. He's pretty sure Roy wouldn't particularly want to have it with him either, but who even knows? He's been remarkably laid back around Jim, which makes him feel tired and guilty if he thinks about it. Jim throws a twenty on the table and slides out of the booth.

"I think that is our signal it's time to head home," he says, trying to sound hearty. It comes out strangled instead, but Roy doesn't notice, just looks up and blinks like he's remembered where he is.

"Yeah," he says. "Yeah, okay." He sways when he stands up, and Jim follows him through the bar. Roy's got one arm in the sleeve of his coat and is unsuccessfully searching for the other one as they push out the door into the cold air, and Jim grabs the sleeve and helps him into it without thinking.

"Thanks," says Roy, and takes an awkward step sideways. He's drunker than Jim had realized, and he's not feeling too steady himself.

"Come on," he says. "Let's get you home."

"Can't," says Roy, turning to follow Jim anyway. "Can't drive like this."

"Yeah, tell me about it," Jim mutters, and then, "whoa," as Roy sways into him. "Here, hang on," he says, and gets Roy's arm around his shoulder to steady him. "You okay, man?" he says.

"Yep," says Roy. "Yeah. Sorry." They're around the corner of the building now, navigating old piles of dirty snow, and Roy lurches again, pushing Jim into the wall.

"Okay," Jim says. "Okay, we can wait here for a minute."

"Cool," says Roy. They stand there in the darkness, leaning on the wall, breathing twin clouds out into the air. Roy's body is warm all along Jim's through his coat, and Jim's still holding the hand that's around his shoulder.

"All right," says Roy. "I'm good." He stands up and takes a step away, but this just swings him around to face Jim. He's taller than Jim, which is always kind of weird, and his face is really close, and his eyes refocus so he's looking right at Jim.

"Wa-" Jim starts to say, and then Roy kisses him, hard and fast, like he's daring Jim to stop him.

Jim's first thought is that this is a joke, a trick, and Roy will be laughing at him in a second. But he doesn't, and the kiss goes on, softens a little. Roy tastes like beer and hot wings and the wall is digging into the back of Jim's head. When he pulls back, Jim stares at him, too surprised to say anything, which Roy must take as acquiescence, because he leans in again.

Jim's expecting it enough this time that he knows he shouldn't kiss back, and yet. Roy makes a tiny rumbling noise somewhere deep in his chest, and this is very probably the weirdest thing that's ever happened to Jim.

Roy slides his hands down Jim's arms to his fists, wraps his own hands around them, and it occurs dimly to Jim that maybe Roy's afraid he'll hit him.

"Shit," says Roy, to no one in particular, when they break for air, and then he presses his teeth to Jim's neck, beard scraping against Jim's collar. It's almost totally quiet in the parking lot and Roy presses their mouths together again, hot and desperate.

Jim's dizzy, and he has to tilt his head up to do this, and he realizes suddenly that he's harder than he can remember being since he was fifteen. His pulse is pounding, fight or flight, adrenaline making him push up against Roy just as hard as Roy's pushing into him, their chests and stomachs and thighs pressed together through layers of clothing.

He's drunk and he's not thinking and he hasn't been laid in a long long time and none of those quite excuse the reaction his dick has when Roy takes Jim's hand and presses it against Roy's hard-on.

Jim's hips do something he didn't quite know they could, and Roy's got one thigh up against Jim so if he moves just like this--

Around the corner the pub door swings open, noise spilling out, and two girls laugh loudly, drunk. Roy jumps back and Jim straightens up instantly. No one comes around the corner, but now they're two feet apart and staring at each other, and somehow this seems much worse. Jim swallows. Roy scrubs a hand over his face.

"I gotta go," he says, and clears his throat. "I-gotta go." He takes off across the parking lot at a pace just under a jog, and Jim doesn't move until his fingers are so cold he can hardly get his car key in the ignition.

 

**

**[Try not to be too GAY on the court.]**

Karen's hanging around at Pam's desk when he comes in the next morning, and she gives him a dirty look that reminds him he was supposed to call her last night. He can't keep from glancing at Pam, who's carefully looking at her computer screen. His head is pounding and when he gets to his desk, Dwight's moved half his stuff so he can set up a complicated system of mirrors to see if Andy is spying on him.

**

Jim doesn't go down to the warehouse for a solid week. He comes in early and stays late and only ever sees Roy's truck at the far end of the parking lot. He feels weird and distracted all the time: if Roy came up to the office and they ran into each other... then what? If he went down to the warehouse, would Roy have told everyone, and would they be spreading rumors like...? If he bumped into Roy in the morning, early, on the way into the building, and Pam was there, too-

"Dude," says Ryan, and Jim realizes he's been jiggling his leg so fast the whole desk is shaking.

"Sorry," he says.

On Thursday, Jim stands up and heads down to the warehouse at three, just when he knows the last trucks are leaving for the day.

"Yo," says Darryl, when he walks in. "The Keystone order? Over there, he's just leaving."

Roy looks up in surprise when Jim opens the passenger door. A wary expression slides over his face when he sees who it is.

"Hey," says Jim, more casually than he feels. "Which Keystone office is this one going out to?"

Roy looks down at his clipboard and then back up.

"Uh, the one downtown," he says.

"Cool," says Jim, "that's on South Main, right?"

They make all three of Roy's deliveries without talking about anything besides the Steelers and the grill Jim's roommate just bought. It's fully dark out by the time they sign off on the last one, and Roy gets back in the truck a minute after Jim does. They're the only vehicle in the little parking lot behind the strip mall - not that Jim checked or anything.

"So," says Jim.

It's a good thing the Dunder Mifflin trucks have bench seats. The cab is completely not big enough for the two of them to be lying down and dry humping, but that's somehow what they're doing before Jim can catch his breath. Roy's mouth on his, Roy's hand on his face, his chest, between his legs. He's still bigger than Jim, his hands, his shoulders.

This is new in a way sex hasn't been since he was a teenager, and he feels kind of like one now, too hard and not sure what to do.

Roy flicks open his own fly, and then Jim's, and Jim has to reassess, he knows exactly what to do. It's just backwards and a little different. Hands and harsh breathing and his knee cracks against the dashboard and the end result is pretty much the same.

Afterward, he slumps against the window, feeling loose-limbed and vague.

"Well," he says, to break the silence. "That was different."

Roy shoots him a skeptical look from his side of the cab.

"Yeah?" he says.

Jim blinks and sits up a little, closes his knees.

"Uh, very much so," he says. "Um, you?"

"I'm not gay," Roy says, which isn't exactly answering the question, Jim notices, but he's not about to push it.

"Yeah, no, totally," he says.

After a while, Roy starts the engine and they drive back to Dunder Mifflin, other cars' headlights flashing by.

"Man," says Roy, without looking over. "This year blows."

Jim lets his head fall sideways against the cold glass of the window.

"Tell me about it," he says.

 

**

**[We just need a strategy, okay? ... All right, Jim, are you using the MP-40 or the 44?]**

"Watch out," says Pam, when he walks into the kitchen one morning.

"What?" he says, and she points to the shamrock pin she's wearing.

"No green," she says, nodding toward his outfit as she pours herself a cup of coffee. "You're gonna get pinched."

"Is that a threat, Beesly?" he asks, tossing his lunch in the fridge.

"You work with Andy and Michael and you think I need to threaten you?" she says, smiling. She pushes out through the door and tosses a grin over her shoulder and it hits him in his stomach all over again, her, that wanting, like nothing's changed at all.

All this time, all he's been trying to do all year is be someone different. The Guy Who Moves To Connecticut. The Guy Who Cared About His Job. The Guy With A Girlfriend. And now, maybe, The Guy Who Messes Around With Other Guys Behind The Warehouse. As identity crises go, it's pretty pathetic.

And not working particularly well--with now as a case in point. It would be easy, so fucking easy to slip back into things with her, with them, being friends, the great parts and the little stabs all mixed up together every day. Leaving that, changing, just about broke him last time, though, and he doesn't know if he can do it all over again.

When he goes out to his desk, Pam's on the phone and she rolls her eyes at him, and his stomach twists. He could go up there, bend all her paperclips into funny shapes, eavesdrop on her phone conversation and tease her afterward. Instead he pulls out his phone book, and starts cold calling in the middle of the Js.

Dwight and Ryan both give him funny looks - cold calling's what you have to do your first year out, when you don't have a client base yet, and he was not at all sorry to say goodbye to that phase of his job. Now he ignores both of them, cradles the phone to his shoulder, and gets hung up on and/or sworn at 17 times in a row. No, no, no.

At lunchtime he closes one sale, goes down to the warehouse and gives his first blowjob.

 

**

**[Steer clear, Big Tuna. Head for open waters.]**

"Hey!" he says to Karen at the copy machine. "Do you wanna come over tonight and watch, uh, whatever Netflix just sent me?"

"Not particularly," she says, and pushes the copy button harder than strictly necessary.

It hurts more than he'd expected. Last week he kissed her up against her car in the parking lot, her hands running up his chest to his face, and she'd smiled at him afterward, and then he hadn't called her for three days, because... well, because.

"I'll be back," he mutters in Ryan's general direction, grabs his keys, and takes off.

Lonny and Madge are sitting outside the warehouse smoking when he hits the parking lot. "'sup," Lonny calls, and Jim waves but doesn't break his stride. He and Roy have now done... whatever, five? Six times. In the truck or at work after hours or once, memorably, on Jim's couch, extremely quietly, after the game ended and Mark went to bed. They don't talk about it, ever, which is fine by Jim. Around the other guys, Roy talks about how hot Heidi Klum is, how he'd bang the Cowboys cheerleaders, and Jim honestly can't tell if it's for show or not.

This time of day the roads are mostly clear and he drives around the block once, twice, three times, before veering off to drive in bigger circles.

What he should do, what he could do, is turn around and make things right with Karen. Buy her dinner, burn her CDs, call her before bed. Be the kind of guy she wants him to be, the kind of guy he'd rather be himself.

Or. Roy is having a party this weekend, and if he goes, he can probably get drunk enough to stay after everyone leaves, and if he stays, Roy will probably let him. And he could have those hot, dizzy minutes where he's not wanting anything, not thinking anything.

And Pam-

What he should really do is quit for real, go somewhere actually new, no cameras following him, chronicling his pathetic life story. Make it stick this time. New York, maybe. Somewhere away from all of them, where Dwight won't call, where Jan won't sit in on meetings. He has savings, and that's what they're for, right?

To be honest, it's not really a choice at all; there's only one thing on the list that doesn't make him feel sick when he thinks about it. It's a little surprising. Jim turns the car around and triple checks with himself the whole way back to work.

His windows are down, and it's not quite spring yet, but there's something in the air like it's about to be. He shifts his hands on the steering wheel, lets the wind hit his face and breathes in.

 

**

  


Glossary of quotes:  
1\. Kevin: I bet he'll try to beat you up.  
Jim: Thanks for the heads up, Kev.  
Kevin: I got your back if he does... but try to stay out of it. (Boys and Girls)  
2\. "ABC: Always Be Closing" (Michael)  
3\. "So you just gotta suck it up. You just gotta move on. Try to have some fun. Come to my poker game tonight." (Jim, Valentine's Day)  
4\. "You should at least talk to Roy. I mean, he knows exactly how you're feeling." (Michael, The Convention)  
5\. "Try not to be too GAY on the court." (Michael, Basketball)  
6\. "We just need a strategy, okay? We're gonna set up a trap in the gun room. All right, Jim, are you using the MP-40 or the 44?" (Josh, The Coup)  
7\. "Steer clear, Big Tuna. Head for open waters" (Andy, Gay Witch Hunt)


End file.
